When SERBIAN PRIZREN was great imperial capital, ROME was the village. Here's why! (PHOTO)

In the fourteenth century, seven consecutive popes dwelt in Avignon in the south of France and have never set foot on the soil of the Eternal City. During that time, Rome was falling apart and sinking into irrelevance, and the population has declined so much that the shepherds graze their sheep on forums and cabbage farmers planted among the ruins of the former imperial palace

After discord and conflict between the French King Philip IV the Beautiful and Pope Boniface VIII, who became ill and died because of distress caused by attacks on his personality and captivity by the rival manor house Colona, Benedict XI was elected as the new Bishop of Rome. 

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However, he died after only eleven months on the throne of St. Peter, which was followed by a one-year interregnum when there was no papa because the blocked conclave, almost equally divided between Italian and French cardinals, was unable to agree on a new head.

At the end of June 1305 in Perugia, in the absence, Raymond Bertrand de Go was finally elected, Archbishop of Bordeaux as the new head of the Catholic Church, who was neither Italian nor a cardinal and it is believed that his election was the result of a compromise. After the Lion was chosen as the city for his coronation for "vicar of Christ" instead of Rome, and after he chose the name Clement V, new nine French cardinals were appointed. This will have far-reaching consequences.

Also, he remained in France and he did not go to Rome. Then in 1309, he pulled his most important move: the papal court was moved to Avignon, the Papal enclave surrounded by countries of former Kingdom Arelat. Thus began 67 years of the long absence of the Roman popes of Rome and stay in Avignon, which will become known as the "Babylonian captivity of the papacy."

A total of seven popes ruled Catholic Church from this town, and they were all influenced by the French and the French crown. It was only in late 1376 and early next year when Pope Gregory XI managed to break free from the stranglehold of the French monarchy and to return to the Eternal City.

What's was going on with Rome all this time? It became irrelevant. A city that was the capital of the world and had over a million inhabitants in the second century, during the Dark Ages and the so-called Pornocracy in X century, has fallen to about thirty thousand inhabitants. Even, 546, it was temporarily completely abandoned after the Ostrogothic plunders, there was no living man in it.

During the papal "exile" in Avignon and the Western schism that followed in the decades following the Pope's return to Rome, an ancient city on the Tiber decreased to 10-15,000 people, although some estimates suggest that the number was actually dramatically lower than that.  

Lateran basilica and other important religious buildings were falling apart, along with the rest of the city, nothing new has been built, and there ware shepherds who graze their sheep on forums, forced the oxen through the Arch of Constantine, the yards of ruins of old temples and palaces were planted with cabbage and cucumber.

In other words, Rome was a village, and it was only in the fifteenth century when it began to recover and to return to the old paths of glory (again thanks to the popes). Ironically, it is precisely because of this that large number of ancient buildings were preserved which would otherwise be destroyed.

Meanwhile, Serbian Prizren was a great imperial capital, so advanced that there was wine line which delivered wine continuously to the imperial palace from wine cellars in The vast Hoca (as Velika Hoca was called in the Middle Ages).

The population was from all over Helma (Balkans), this was a true metropolis: the Serbs were of course the majority, but there were a lot of people from Dubrovnik, Korculan, Split, Albanians, citizens of Zadar, Blaise, Venetians, Greeks, Sasa. The City was managed by Kefalija who has always been a Serb, while the market was managed by prince who was usually from Dubrovnik or Kotor.

How big was Prizren at that time we can not say, but it certainly was bigger than Rome (about a hundred years later, the Serbian Novo Brdo will have a population of 50,000 and will be one of the major European cities of that time, bigger than London). On the other hand, no matter how Rome at the time of the fourteenth century was a small religious and political irrelevant compared to what it was before and after that, it is only relative. Rome was big at the time for medieval conditions.

(Telegraf.co.uk / O.S.)